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Homecoming for a Veteran of the ‘Secret War’ in Southeast Asia

Thousands of people in the quiet towns of Concord and Kannapolis, N.C., will remember the weekend of April 30 and May 1 for a long time.

Yes, they shared the jubilation on May 1 with the rest of the country when news broke that members of the Navy Seals had killed Osama bin Laden with rounds to his head and chest.

Sgt. First Class Donald Monroe Shue

But in these boroughs a short distance from Charlotte, many residents will remember it as the weekend that the remains of a native son, Sgt. First Class Donald Monroe Shue, were returned home after he and two fellow Special Forces soldiers disappeared during a highly classified mission in Laos on Nov. 3, 1969, part of the secret war in Vietnam.

Forty-one years later, Sergeant Shue’s remains were put to rest in Carolina Memorial Park in Kannapolis, formally ending four decades of agonizing pain and uncertainty for his sisters, Betty Jones and Peggy Hinson, nephew Micky Jones and a handful of Special Forces veterans who served in Sergeant Shue’s unit.
As a Green Beret, Sergeant Shue was part of a deadly eight-year war that was hidden from the public, not unlike the Seal members who conducted the successful mission in Pakistan. Like the Navy Seals, Sergeant Shue and his teammates prepared for their mission in a secret compound before flying in helicopters from a secure base deep into enemy territory. And, like the Seal team, his team’s fate remained shrouded in secrecy until commanders deemed it safe to reveal the mission.

The Seal team’s success, however, was announced just hours after completion of its mission. Once the team members were safe and the president was briefed, the killing of Bin Laden was reported to the country.

But in Sergeant Shue’s case, it would take many years before the Army revealed his mission and what had happened to him.

During the early morning hours of Nov. 3, 1969, his unit, Reconnaissance Team Maryland, was inserted into the eastern side of Savannakhet Province in Laos. The team consisted of three American Special Forces soldiers and six Montagnard troops. Staff Sgt. Gunther Wald was the team leader, Sgt. Bill Brown was the assistant team leader and Sergeant Shue was the radio operator. The team’s mission was a general reconnaissance to determine if reports of increased enemy troop activity were accurate.

Sgt. First Class Terry Lanegan of the Special Forces was flying with the forward air controller when Team Maryland was inserted, without incident. Sergeant Lanegan flew over the team twice during the day. The last time he spoke to Sergeant Shue was shortly before 3 p.m., when the team was on Yen Ngue Hill in the Huong Lap Village. Shortly after Sergeant Lanegan left the area, enemy soldiers attacked: Sergeant Brown was hit by AK-47 fire and Sergeants Wald and Shue were mortally wounded by enemy fragmentation grenades, according to the final report issued by the Department of Defense’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, in Hawaii.

The accounting command’s report was based partly on interviews with the North Vietnamese troops who attacked Team Maryland.

In 1969, bad weather prevented searchers from entering Savannakhet Province to search for Team Maryland. Finally, on Nov. 11, a search team located Sergeant Shue’s web gear. But they found no evidence of his body or those of Sergeants Wald and Brown.

The fate of Team Maryland was reported through the chain of command to the White House, but there was no report to the public. Other than those senior officials, only fellow special operators knew that Sergeant Shue’s team had been lost and could not be recovered. Sergeant Shue was 20. His father had signed a waiver enabling him to enter the Army when he was 17.

Sergeant Shue’s family was told only that he was missing in action during combat in South Vietnam. Ten years later – after the sergeant’s father had died — officials told the Shue family that the young soldier’s status had been changed to presumed killed in action. Thirty years later – after Sergeant Shue’s mother had died — a farmer in Laos found human remains that JPAC officials determined were the three Americans from Reconnaissance Team Maryland: Sergeants Shue, Wald and Brown. A forensic report confirmed that teeth recovered from that area matched Sergeant Shue’s dental records. They also recovered his cigarette lighter.

I, too, was a Special Forces soldier during Vietnam, and I knew Donald Shue. We worked in complete secrecy. Even the official name of our unit cloaked our mission in the secrecy of bureaucratese: Military Assistance Command-Vietnam Studies and Observations Group — or S.O.G., as we knew it.

Because our missions were top secret, and because we had signed agreements with the government promising not to talk about S.O.G. for 20 years, I knew that I couldn’t go home and tell Sergeant Shue’s mother what had really happened to her son, or where he was actually killed. Compounding that gnawing frustration was the knowledge that if I were killed in Laos, my family would be kept in the dark. And, if our reconnaissance team had a successful mission, I couldn’t sit down and tell my folks about how we wiretapped enemy phone lines, placed Air Force sensors along jungle trails and roads to monitor enemy movement or killed enemy troops during brutal battles deep in the jungles of Laos, Cambodia or North Vietnam.

As a student who studied American history — especially the Revolutionary War and one of George Washington’s top spies, John Honeyman — I wondered if anyone would ever read about the exploits of the Green Berets who fought in America’s secret war in Vietnam. Years later, as I listened to veterans tell their war stories, I wanted to chime in about SOG missions, but we were the “quiet professionals.” I remained reticent.

The large majority of men who volunteered to serve in Special Forces did so knowing they would live in a secret world where simply knowing about a successful mission was one’s reward. There would be no bragging rights. There was no phalanx of media personnel to tell our story. It was Special Forces, operating in the dark, far away from public knowledge and snoopy reporters.

Fast-forward to the end of April 29, 2011, when a flag-draped casket rolled down a cargo ramp underneath the Delta Air Lines jet that flew Sergeant Shue’s remains from Hawaii to Charlotte. The casket was greeted by a Special Forces honor guard and the sergeant’s family members.

Finally, he was home.

Finally, his sisters and family members had closure.

And, finally, several Special Forces soldiers who served with Sergeant Shue were relieved that one of their own was finally returned to loved ones.

Thousands of spectators attended memorial services for Sergeant Shue in Concord and Kannapolis, and the funeral on Sunday. Thousands more lined the roads holding flags as Sergeant Shue’s procession passed, escorted by more than 4,000 motorcyclists from the Special Forces Association, the Patriot Guard, Rolling Thunder, Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Club and Combat Veterans Association.

Leading the procession were a former Green Beret who served with Sergeant Shue, and members of the Special Operations Association who traveled from California, Louisiana, Maine and Florida to attend the service. Peggy Hinson, Sergeant Shue’s sister, said through tears that she had never seen anything like it.

The men who fought in the secret war were grateful that he was home. But we also reflected on the fact that 51 Green Berets who fought in Southeast Asia remain listed as missing in action, grim reminders of how deadly that war was. So deadly, indeed, that the casualty rate for many Special Operations teams exceeded 100 percent — a statistical anomaly made possible when soldiers were wounded more than once in the line of duty.

On April 4, 2001, at a small ceremony at Fort Bragg, N.C., a Presidential Unit Citation — the equivalent of a Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest military decoration — was awarded to the Special Forces soldiers and the many helicopter units and tactical air units that supported S.O.G. A copy of that citation was presented to Sergeant Shue’s sisters, Betty Jones and Peggy Hinson, shortly before his funeral.

At the funeral in 2011, Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland Jr., the current leader of the Army’s Special Operations Command, knelt to present the sisters something else: tightly folded American flags. “On behalf of a grateful nation,” he said.

Then General Mulholland returned to Fort Bragg, where he received news about the Navy Seals in Pakistan.

J. Stryker Meyer served two tours of duty with Special Forces during the secret war in Southeast Asia and has written two non-fiction books about S.O.G.. His Web site is Sogchronicles.com
Mr. Meyer is currently an associate director for veterans affairs at Interfaith Community Services, a nonprofit in San Diego County, Calif., that provides 170 beds for homeless veterans.

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